


Sustaining

by starcunning (Vannevar)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Brotherhood, FDNH Apocrypha, First Do No Harm, Gen, POV Second Person, Trans Male Character, the transience and fragility of memory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7423948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vannevar/pseuds/starcunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hanzo has probably had better meals in his life, but he has forgotten. This one he remembers, important only in retrospect. Every time he tries to recall the details, they fade a little more, like a photograph in sunlight. It goes, more or less, like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sustaining

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jessiphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessiphile/gifts).



> For Jessi, who should be careful what she wishes for.

Hanzo has probably had better meals in his life, but he has forgotten. This one he remembers, important only in retrospect. Every time he tries to recall the details, they fade a little more, like a photograph in sunlight. It goes, more or less, like this:

The chime sounds, _bing-bong_ , announcing the two of you. Artificial light spills your shadows out behind you into the streets. Strangers sit shoulder-to-shoulder on their stools and the room swelters with steam rising from bowls, from cookpots, from skin.

Genji plucks at the collar of his shirt, which hangs loose on his body, obscuring the form beneath. Despite the crowd at Rikimaru, you find seats easily—in this case a fringe benefit of being who you are. The dragon has always rested too close to your skin and made them draw back. Genji hides it better, which is an asset here and a liability elsewhere.

You get what you always get—tonkatsu ramen with ninniku-dare—and Genji, who never can decide, thinks up some tuna-yuzu mazemen concoction. He wants his sake hot, but you talk him down because it’s already too warm in here. Beers, instead, for both of you.  
“You’re already overheated,” you tell him, over his protests.  
“I’m not,” he says. He sounds petulant, but maybe that’s just because he will always be your little brother in your memory, though both of you were men grown.  
“It’s going to kill you someday, Genji,” you say.  
“Dehydration?” He scoffs.  
That isn’t what you meant. The beers come first, perspiring in the humidity. The crack as they open is satisfying in its familiarity. You know why Genji is too warm. You know better than to tell him to shed that extra layer. You don’t quite know how to explain that the other families are not so understanding. Not so indulgent. You can say nothing you have not already said; you cannot help that he refuses to hear.

You feel caught, because you love him, your brother, but you cannot protect him anymore. It killed your father, you think, but you have never said so.

Genji sips his beer. Makes a face. He casts a glance out toward the street, where night has covered Hanamura like a blanket. Lights dance in the distance. If you strain to listen, you can almost hear the sounds that accompany them. He looks back at you.  
“Wanna take a few laps around the track?” he asks, and you’re almost glad he means the simulation. You remember when he was young and how unbecoming it was for the youth that would become your brother to sit on the shiny simulacrum motorcycle, and how often you hear that it was unseemly to have gotten a real one.  
“We’re not children anymore,” you say, looking down at your hand, grasping the bottle.  
“What do you think being an adult means?” he wonders, rolling his eyes. “It means making your own choices.”  
“It means making the best choices,” you say, “which are not always self-serving or easy.”  
“It’s just an hour at the arcade,” he says, but there’s a wobble in his voice that betrays his hurt feelings. A gap in his scales, ripe for the spear. If you know it, your enemies do, too.  
“No, Genji,” you say, and the ramen arrives, and you think you have the last word.

But his noodles are chilled, in no danger of dissolving overboiled into the scant broth that coats them, so in between bites he rebuts: “That is going to kill _you,_  you know.”  
You say nothing, because if you stop eating your noodles will turn to mush.  
“That slavish devotion to duty.”  
“I am aware of my enemies,” you say.  
“Which is part of what is killing you. You think I don’t see, but since Mother died you have been less Hanzo and more Shimada.”  
“What should I be?” The question is acrid in your mouth, burning on your tongue in the way your food does not.  
“You should be my brother,” Genji says, slamming down his bowl. Beer pours foamy where it’s spilled, over the lip of the table, into your lap. You stand, scowling, and right the bottles. You go to wash up.

You sponge what you can from the cloth of your pants, annoyed at his outburst, at his presumption. He does not follow you, though you doubt he has escaped his own petulance. You frown at your reflection in the mirror, locking eyes with yourself. Your face, always grave, has taken on an unpleasant cast. Perhaps that’s just the fluorescent lighting, which has always made those caught under it look dead. The way you tie your hair back makes it obvious that the greys have started to come in at your temples. Genji might have diplomatically called you distinguished, but you just feel old before your time. The dragon coiled around your bare arm shifts and writhes as you work.

Your noodles will be ruined. So will your pants. There’s a curious sort of liberation in the realization: if there’s anything that you can salvage, it is only the night. You want to laugh, and worry when you don’t. Have you forgotten how? You resolve to go to the arcade, to ride motorcycles with your brother, to remember what joy feels like.

You go to tell him, and he’s not there. A few notes wait on the bar, floating in the beer, getting soggy. It is a deliberate rejection: he won’t take so much as a meal from you, and is spiteful in saying so. You don’t think he will come home. You know where he goes, but it is not a place you are ready to follow. You don’t know yourself yet.

It is not the last meal Hanzo shares with his brother, but it is the one he remembers. It is the one he regrets.


End file.
